June 2008

Whilst I was away on holiday in the US last week, I had plenty of time to do some reading, and I took the opportunity to work my way through half a dozen recent issues of the New Scientist, as well as read some American house building magazines. I came across some interesting stuff, one of which was an article by Richard Lovett entitled Carbon Lockdown (3 May, page 32 (behind a paywall)), which posited that a good way to reduce CO2 in our atmosphere would be to grow lots of trees for burial, thus sequestering the carbon underground.

Atmospheric scientist Ning Zeng is convinced that if we buried enough trees - where ‘enough’ equals ‘half the trees that grow each year’ - in such a manner that it doesn’t decay, we could offset all our fossil fuel emissions. Other schemes involve burying ‘biochar’, which sounds a lot like charcoal, or hydrothermally carbonised biomatter.

Another tactic is to reinvigorate the wold’s marshes and bogs, which naturally sequester CO2 in plant matter that’s turned into peat. This is already being done in places, not just for carbon sequestration but also as a way to protect and extend endangered habitats.

But here’s a thought or two. Firstly, it’s not an either/or situation - we can probably embark on all sorts of carbon sequestration projects. No one method is going to save the world on its own. Secondly, instead of burying wood, why not just use more of it in building and furniture making?

Wood retains its CO2 content so long as it’s not rotting, which means that wood used in a house is as good as wood buried in an anoxic environment, so why not use more of it? Our forefathers grew wood as a crop, projecting their needs a couple of hundred years into the future and planting trees accordingly. Many forests are now similarly managed, and if we treat wood as valuable crop, instead of as a sacred cow, we can use a lot more of it than we currently do.

I’ve noticed that some environmentalists feel that chopping down trees is the biggest sin we can commit, but we need to draw a very clear line between sustainable and well managed wood resources where trees are planted to replace those cut down, and pristine forests that are being raped and pillaged by ruthless loggers and desperate farmers. We need more crop trees, and we need to go all-out to protect our endangered forest habitats, but we can’t turn our back on all wood and treat every tree as if it’s sacred.

The way I see it, more wooden furniture, more wood used in house-building, and more innovative uses of wood, such as turning it into insulation, could both reinvigorate our forest-based economy and help us sequester carbon. A side effect would also be to provide us with a higher-quality and longer-lasting furniture, for example, or a warmer feel to our car interior finishes - nicer, more enjoyable day-to-day environments.

Burying wood seems like a waste when we can do so much more with it.

• Cities for Living by Roger Scruton, City Journal Spring 2008
  Fascinating article criticial of modernist architecture and contrasting it with that of Leon Krier, who takes a much more sympathetic classical approach. You can immediately see how Krier’s community-focused ideas are much more human and sustainable.
  (tags: leonkrier anti-modernism classicim community poundbury cities urbanplanning sociology krier)

• fig 7.45 true development on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
  Make your own geodesic dome, admittedly out of card or paper, but hey, could be something to show the artchitects.
  (tags: geodesicdome dome geodesic model plan)

I had an email from Peter MacLellan the other day, telling me about a “360 degree immersive image” of the interior of Black Sheep House that he put together for the builders, Miles of Harris Construction. He says it “shows all the exposed timberwork before it was plastered. Amazing joinery - it’s a pity it was largely covered up.”

And so it does! Well worth a look, particularly at the roof, which is a little bit more complex than your average. Beautiful work.

LiveModern is an “online community for modern, sustainable housing design, products and services” which provides forums, blogs for members and aggregates content from relevant blogs around the world. It also has a handy blog directory which features a lot of build blogs, most of which are in the US, but others of which are in places as diverse as Montserrat in the West Indies, and the Swedish archipelago. (Thanks to Alex for the tip!)

In the closing hours of Grand Designs Live, I finally got a chance to get up close and personal to The House That Kevin Built. It was a lot of fun to get in there and have a look round, especially as I was one of the last allowed in, so I got the place to myself for a while, hence the huge number of photos.

Here you can see right up and under the cladding.

And the rain screen from the lower, unrendered parts of the ModCell storey.

[click to continue...]

By the end of Friday, the seventh day, the Kevin’s house was starting to look complete. The roof was waterproof and complete with skylights. Windows were in and glazed, and the cladding applied to the sides of the house.

The cladding panels for the upper half of the house were made on site by a computerised flatbed router. I suspect that they could be a fabulous habitat for bees, and possibly house martens too, as they provide a nice sheltered space under the slats for nest-building. I’m not sure that was the intention though…

How many camera folk does it take to do a practice run of a piece to camera? Six, it would seem. I love the camera on the enormous boom - that’s how they get those fabulous, swoopy shots.

By the end of the day, the scaffolding was down and the house was revealed in all it’s glory.

And from certain angles, you can start to get a feel for how this would look if it were in a residential setting, instead of on a patch of grass in between a massive exhibition hall and a hotel.

I was so excited that I happpened to be around for the topping out ceremony of The House That Kevin Built. Kevin McCloud explained to the assembled crowd that a ‘topping out’ ceremony is held when the highest point of a structure has been put up. The builders take up a leafy sprig of oak, or whatever wood has been used in construction, and nail it to the very apex of the structure.

In this case, they had a sheaf of thatch prepared so that it could stand up upon the top of the roof. Kevin joked that it was the responsibility of the youngest and handsomest of the builders to top out, but that that wasn’t him. Youngest, maybe not, but I’d argue about handsomest.

Of course, a libation has to be made which, along side the offering of the sheaf, is intended to thank the gods, goddesses and spirits of forest and field for giving up their bounty to allow the building of the house.

Bottles of champers were distributed amongst the build crew, liberally shaken and then opened.

Despite protestations from the producer that Health & Safety would have a fit if there was any drinking on-site, a toast is made, and the topping out ceremony is complete.

He smiled just after this, honest.

Throughout Grand Designs Live, Kevin McCloud and a team of builders, celebrities, and TV crew built a house in the Grand Village, with ModCell’s straw bales panels and vertical thatch on the ground floor, and the Facit building system used for the first floor and roof. Although I missed the very first stages of building, I kept as much of an eye on the house as possible.

The original brief was pretty simple:

To design and build a sustainable house, using traditional materials and techniques alongside cutting-edge 21st century technology which underpins [Kevin's] green principles.

When I arrived, on the morning of Day 4, the bottom storey, built by ModCell, was already complete and work had started on Facit’s half. The straw bales panels were all in place, but had not all been lime rendered. The glazing and window/door frames were also absent, but you could already get a sense of how the house was doing to look.

One panel was clad in vertical thatch. I heard that this was the first time that vertical thatch had ever been used in the UK, and whilst it looks kinda cool I have my doubts about it. Firstly, the individual stalks of thatch come out really easy, and are very tempting to pull at for the fidgety-fingered. This leads me to believe that the thatch would thin out very quickly, and the more thatch is pulled out, the less tightly packed the remaining straw or reed is, and the easier that comes out… Secondly, it would be a haven for small insects and spiders, which is fine on the outside, but less keen on that internally.

The other side of the house, showing rendered ModCell panels and one left open for later glazing.

The second storey, supplied by Facit goes up really quickly.

The Accoya wood doors and windows, from Westgate Joinery, go in. Accoya is basically softwood that has been treated with acetic anhydride at temperature and under pressure to give it the properties of hardwood. This means that it can be sustainably sourced, and the treatment makes it incredibly durable. I had a chat with a chap who was a real Accoya fan, and he told me that the manufacturer’s guarantee is 30 years, with the importer adding another 10 onto that - that’s showing a fair amount of confidence! This build was the first time he’d seen Accoya in the flesh, as it were, and he was getting really quite excited about it.

I have to say, the idea of a sustainable hardwood substitute really is quite exciting because it would reduce the need to cut down slow-growing hardwoods or use environmentally unkind treatments for softwoods, all of which is much better for the planet. Even the by-product of the hardening process is recyclable - it’s acetic acid, or as we usually call it, vinegar. Not that you’d want to put this vinegar on your chips…

The build progresses, and the roof goes on.

The holes at the top are for piping in insulation.

Work goes on inside, hidden away from nosey bloggers, sadly.

The Facit panels for the apex of the roof are so light that they could actually be carried by one person.

Kevin McCloud setting up for recording.

Kevin indulges in a bit of pole dancing.

Kevin does his piece to camera. I wasn’t close enough to be able to hear what he was saying, but I asked Finlay White from Modcell about the panel that he’s standing in front of, as I really couldn’t figure out what it was supposed to be. Apparently, it’s a silica aerogel window which soaks up solar heat during the day and releases it during the night. According to the Channel 4 site, this particular panel was of Cabot Nanogel.

More photos in the next post!